My last post was a love letter to my kindle.

So I thought there should be some fruit from all this love. I have read four books this year already without being on holiday which is pretty good for me.

So here are a few thoughts from a couple of them…

The first book I read was – A Hunger for God (John Piper)

This is my first Piper book I have read and I really loved it. The way he sets out his arguments and solutions really resonated with me and made me want to read more! It reminded me of the passion you have as a young person to do something great for God and how much I never want to loose that passion!

Is fasting Christian? It is if it comes from confidence in Christ and is sustained by the power of Christ and aims at the glory of Christ. Over every Christian fast should be written the words, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8).

His Fasting Was Both War and Weapon, Testing and Triumph Now we can see the meaning of Jesus’ fasting more clearly. It was not an arbitrary choice of something to do in the face of Satanic temptation. It was a voluntary act of identification with the people of God in their wilderness deprivation and trial

This is the deepest lesson of Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness. It was a weapon in the war against satanic deception because it was a demonstration that Jesus hungered more for God and God’s will than he did for God’s wonders.

it is possible to do extraordinary fasting and yet not humble ourselves, pray, seek God, and turn from wickedness.

Another book I have been wanting to read for a while is Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith (Shane Hipps)

This really help form ideas in my brain about exactly the media around is shaping our thinking and especially the minds of our kids.

When we fail to perceive that the things we create are extensions of ourselves, the created things take on god-like characteristics and we become their servants.

We must remember that the Bible is not merely—or even primarily—a collection of objective propositions. It is a grand story told through hundreds of different perspectives and diverse social settings. The message is multilayered, textured, expansive, and complex.

The point is that our theology and practice are deeply informed and shaped by our media and technology. We become what we behold.

Our age has seen the disappearance of childhood.

If God’s chosen medium for his message was the person of Jesus Christ, and the church is the body of Christ, that means God has chosen the church to extend his revelation in a special way. The church exists to embody and proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom. If the medium is the message, the message of the gospel is conveyed by the medium of the church’s life in the world.

The great thing is I simply pasted these snippets from a file on the kindle. They were all highlighted as I read the book, saving all the thoughts that jumped out at me!

For Christmas I got a Kindle.

I stopped buying CD’s a few years ago and really don’t ever want another plastic jewel case filling up my humble abode ever again. Alongside books they were one of the most annoying items of household stuff to move from old place of residence to new place of residence.

I spent thousands of dollars on CD’s over the years and I am old enough to have bought tapes. But since getting an iPod and Apple TV I have been slowly disposing of my collection as I have gone completely digital. That isn’t to say that I am one hundred percent happy. iTunes does not put enough information into it’s track listings. I like to read who the musicians, the producers, where the albums was recorded and lots of extra info that satisfies my insatiable geeky knowledge requirements.

Turning my book collection digital wasn’t a realistic option I thought – maybe it was the admiring looks that people give when you have a book shelf full of books. It says something about you when statistics suggest 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.

Maybe it comes from films… every really clever genius in the movies always has a library stocked full of thick tomes about history and architecture and entomology.

Maybe it was because I never had a TV in the house until I was 12 years old that fuelled my love of books and surprisingly… TV (making up for lost time I guess).

Well something has changed.

I used to have to order books from local book stores and wait weeks for delivery because the somewhat obscure titles I like to imbibe were not always readily available in quaint Australia… and  by upon receiving them my passion for the topic may have waned and it will sit on a shelf for awhile waiting for such a time as… whenever.

I used to have to spend an inordinate amount of time finding stats/quotes/research that I just knew were around there somewhere if I could only just find them…

I used to love the smell and feel of a new book…

I now no longer want to buy another hardback, paperback, magazine, physical type book for the rest of my life.

The book store browsing is over, my book store is in my Amazon wish list. Every book I am remotely interested to read is on that list, and should at some point make it’s way to my Kindle.

I only just last week decided not to buy a book simply because it wasn’t available in digital form. I wrote an email to the publisher explaining why this is not a good business decision.

If I like a quote, or read a great statistic… I push a button and it saves it for me in a clippings file that I can search later.

If I want to read a book, it will most likely be available to read in 30 seconds from any where in cell phone coverage (and if not, probably by the end of 2010 – my prediction… listen up publishers).

I will have to live without the admiring envious glances at my collection of books as one day soon they will all be given away to new homes.

P.S. ALTHOUGH I need to point out this… books will never go away. They will always have a place. Perhaps one day in 2047 I shall sit down with my grand kids and pull out a magnificent illustrated hardback copy of the Chronicles of Narnia, and before I get to read a word they will marvel, and ask of me… “What were the dinosaurs like Grandfather?”

P.P.S. This Christmas was the first time that Amazon sold more digital books than physical books.

You can lead without a position. In fact position can take you away from leadership as responsibility grows.

Remarkable Leadership by Kevin Eikenberry presents a number of qualities that remarkable leaders must have. They…

• Learn continually
• Champion change
• Communicate powerfully
• Build relationships
• Develop others
• Focus on customers
• Influence with impact
• Act innovatively
• Value collaboration and teamwork
• Solve problems and make decisions
• Take responsibility and have accountability
• Manage projects and processes successfully
• Set goals and support goal achievement

To be a great leader play up your  strengths and work on your weaknesses.

Earn the right to the position. You will probably be given a position before you have earnt it (even if you think you deserve it).

Just read a book that really messed me up.

Family Driven Faith by Voddie Baucham Jr.

I am pretty focussed right now on making sure I know where I am heading as a father to my little Brooklyn (3 years).

So I am reading a bunch of books on parenting and especially developing faith.

Voddie lives in a very different culture than me, and a different church culture than me… but he bought into sharp focus to me for both my family life and ministry life – What is the end result I want for this child?

And then… how do we get there?

Let’s look at what we do… is it producing the right results?

Voddie is a homeschooler and his church is a ‘family-integrated‘ model which is something new to me and definitely something I am checking out and believe I can learn from (check out NCFIC).

I love books about being dangerous, wild and crazy. I loved ‘Wild at Heart’ by John Eldredge, it awakened in me a sense of adventure and life!

The same effect is being felt as I read ‘Wild Goose Chase’ by Mark Batterson.

I recieved a copy today and started reading it tonight. Mark is a clever man and has given away a bunch of copies to bloggers to review to generate some buzz. So here goes some buzz for ya!

I love it already!

Any book that takes the subject of pursuing God and turns it into an adventure is my kind of book.

“I would like to think that…at the end of our church services, I am sending dangerous people back into their natural habitat to wreak havoc on the enemy.”

Bring it on!

I have said it before that our kids need to know deep down in their bones that to follow Christ is an unpredictable adventure!

I am posting this from my phone and as I mentioned, have not finished the book so a more thorough review is forth coming. Stay tuned.

One of my favourite church bloggers is Mark Batterson. Mark Batterson is lead pastor of National Community Church (www.theaterchurch.com) in Washington, DC, blogs @ www.evotional.com.

He has just finished writing his first book all about an obscure yet courageous act in 2 Samuel 23:20-21. This dude is a great blogger and I cannot wait to read the rest of this book. My life right now requires me to chase down some lions so I am pumped to get my hot little hands on this book!

Pick it up here at Amazon.

“Your greatest regret at the end of your life will be the lions you didn’t chase. You will regret the risks not taken, the opportunities not seized and the dreams not pursued. Stop running away from what scares you most and start chasing the God-ordained opportunities that cross your path.”

In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day is inspired by one of the most obscure yet courageous acts recorded in Scripture (II Samuel 23:20-21): Benaiah chased a lion down into a pit. Then, despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it.

Your Best Life Now – by Joel Osteen
Warner Faith 2004

7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
Joel Osteen pastors Lakewood Church which was started Mothers Day 1959 by his father John. On October 3, 1999, after the death of his father, Joel became the senior pastor of Lakewood.

This book is right up there with the Purpose Driven Life, and as one of those books that gets read, it seems, by pretty much the entire english speaking Christian world and beyond.

The seven steps probably won’t surprise you, they are well worn lessons that we can overlook in making things too complicated.

Here are the seven steps:

1. Enlarge your vision (what you focus on is what you get)

2. Develop a healthy self image (believe you can do it!)

3. Discover the power of your thoughts and words (your thoughts and words can pave the way to real changes around you)

4. Let go of the past (focus on what you want)

5. Find strength through adversity (trust God to get you there in His own good time)

6. Give! (giving opens up the doors of receiving)

7. Choose to be happy (enthusiasm for opportunity helps create fine results)
Like the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, this book presents things very simply and this is part of the reason for its success and effectiveness.

Application for Children’s Ministry:
Keep it Simple.

Don’t use too much ‘Christian-ese’.

Our kids (and adults) need to hear the truth, and they need it simply. I have heard too many people use words that would work on well on an adult who grew in church in the 60′s but are irrelevant to a child’s world today.

The literacy ability of people reading this blog would surprise you, and me for that matter. Rule of thumb: If your 10 year old can’t understand it, write it simpler (is that good grammer?)

Check out this statistic (from Audiblox.com):

In the U.S.A. the $14 million National Adult Literacy Survey of 1993 found that even though most adults in this survey had finished high school, 96% of them could not read, write, and figure well enough to go to college. Even more to the point, 25% were plainly unable to read.

Now this may be a reasonably strange lesson to learn from ‘Your Best Life Now’, but then I am a reasonably strange kinda guy (just ask my wife).

Tilt! – By Louis Patler
2000 Capstone Publishing

Irreverent lessons for leading innovation in the new economy.

So this book was written in 1999, a good 7 years ago, so it was interesting to read Louis’ perspectives now in the light of years of progress.
This is a business management book… I seem to be reading a lot of them recently?
And it didn’t really grab me as much as I though it would. BUT… I have a theory why…

Patler talks about ideas that have since become the standard mode of thought in the business world; Attitude, Perspective, Leadership, Retention, Globalism… so maybe if I had read this book a few years ago I would be much more astounded at the insight and thought processes of the author.

Application for Children’s Ministry:
From Chapter Two – ‘The Future’. A paragraph that discusses a team that analysed Einsteins brain)
(Page 15) The story went on to describe just how “normal” his brain (Einstein’s) appears to be. THey quote Einstein, who never took himself too seriously, as saying, “My brain ought to be studied for scientific reasons so that if anyone has a question, it can be answered”…I read on and noticed some comments by Einstein’s grand daughter, Albany Eyelyn Einstein. “Anything they find [by examining her grandpa's brain] will be interesting,” she said. “I think it’s important to look for something if it’s there; and if nothing’s there, to prove he was a normal guy. He was not some new, super-developmental stage of the human race,” she said. ” I think he retained, to a large degree, the freedom and the ability to think like a child!”…don’t just look for the predictable solution, look beyond it for what I call “the second solution.”

Lesson: Think like a child.

Seven Miracles of Management – Alan Downs

1998 Prentice Hall.

This is a very business focused management book, but written from a spiritual sense… hence the word miracle. It talks of 8 ‘miracles’: Manifestation, Reciprocity, Honesty, Forgiveness, Passion, Esteem, Transcending the Past.

Well written book… not too long.

Highlights:

Managing is nothing more than taking people, materials, and funding, and making the relationship of these disparate items greater than the sum of the parts. In other words, creating something more than what was before (xxiv introduction).
Nothing new in our reality comes into being without first being born of an idea (page 2).

On bureaucracy: …consider the organization where there is a breakdown of manifestation. We all know it; it is called the bureaucratic organization. In this company, ideas don’t flourish and consequently, creative solutions never manifest (page 4).

The process of manifestation (page 6):

1. Visualization
2. Commitment
3. Affirmation
4. Realization

Senior managers seldom think in ways that one might simplistically view as ‘rational’. Instead, when the pressure is on and the stakes are high, intuition was the tool most likely to be used for decision making (page 10).

The effective manager of the organization is a gardener of ideas, creating a fertile and receptive environment for iedas to flourish and mature. Of the joy of harvest is to come, the manager must first cultivate the humans field of ideas (page 27).

A great section on page 25 discusses the WAY to implement new ideas:
…build joint commitment to the idea and act as if the new idea were already a reality. She begins to confidently establish all of the processes necessary for the new idea. Most important the manager begins to speak of the new idea with positive, reinforcing affirmantions. She uses every opportunity to speak with both actions and words about the new idea…as they see pictures of the new reality, they slowly begin to accept the new idea for themselves. Once stakeholders own the new idea, a critical mass of unity forms and idea begins to manifest.

On past experiences:
We give memories extraordinary power over our lives… Past events cannot reach into the present and control us unless we allow them to do so.
Summary:

Profound, simple book that outlines some very Christian ideas. The one lesseon remembered… how to implement new ideas.